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If you urgently want a product from somewhere in the free world and you are willing to pay the price, the worst “shortage” you will experience is the cost of flying there or hiring a “personal shopper.” As I previously wrote in response to an EconLog comment, “if you were willing to pay and you .. MORE
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International Trade
Regulations Keep Millions of Bedrooms Empty During a Housing Crisis by Howard Husock, Reason, January 17, 2025. Excerpts: The U.S. is facing a housing affordability crisis, and new data from Realtor.comhighlight an often missed contributing factor: millions of empty bedrooms. Census data reveal 31.8 million “excess” bedrooms in American homes—compared to just 4 million .. MORE
Macroeconomics
It turns out that “greedflation” is not just an American misconception, the same fallacy exists in many other countries. Kürşad Görgen has a blog discussing Turkish monetary policy issues, from a market monetarist perspective. Last year, he did a post discussing some rather unconventional views: After the 2023 elections, Turkey abandoned its infamous NeoFisherian interest .. MORE
Economic Education
Financial education is an essential component for the economic and social development of nations. In an increasingly interconnected world, understanding how personal finances and markets operate is an indispensable skill for individuals and economies alike. However, in countries like Colombia, the lack of financial education negatively impacts financial inclusion, investment, and economic growth. From a .. MORE
Political Economy
The FTC is rumored to be preparing legal action against Greystar, the largest landlord in the US, for “hidden fees”, also called “junk fees” (“FTC Prepares to Sue Largest U.S. Apartment Landlord Over Hidden Fees,” Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2025): The FTC finalized its hidden-fees rule last month and said it would seek civil .. MORE
History of Economic Thought
Fellow economist Susan Woodward sent me this anecdote about Ronald Coase and gambling that I thought worth sharing. It led me to remember my own interesting story about gambling and one famous economist. Bob Hall [her husband] and I were talking about the 1987 Coase conference at Yale, which I attended but Bob did not. I .. MORE
Adam Smith
The title of this post is a nod to Alfred Marshall, who stressed that supply and demand analysis required we think about “both blades of the scissors.” Prices are not set by supply or demand alone – it is the interaction between the two that is crucial. It is for this reason Greg Mankiw once .. MORE
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Browse our archive of posts by author last nameAdam Smith
Inclusion and openness In Part 1, I wrote about Don Lavoie’s argument that robust liberalism requires open (democratic) politics that can make useful the tacit, dispersed knowledge of voters’ “interests, concerns, and demands to provide governance structures that people will use to resolve political disagreements peacefully.” Liberalism requires open democracy just as it requires open .. MORE
Competition
Age-Verification Laws are a Verified Mistake by Corbin K. Barthold, Law & Liberty, January 9, 2025. Excerpt: Now legislators, both state and federal, are going the other way. They’re introducing, supporting, and (only, so far, at the state level) enacting bills that impose age-verification requirements on social media platforms and adult websites. Current online age-verification .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
In Bryan Caplan’s book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, he outlines four biases impacting how most voters think about economics. One of the biases he identifies is anti-foreign bias – the tendency of voters to become especially pessimistic about the economic impact of dealing with foreigners. A recent book by .. MORE
Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia was released in 1974, shortly after (and partly in response to) his Harvard colleague John Rawls’ 1971 A Theory of Justice. Anarchy, State, and Utopia included a theory of rights and a right-based account of liberalism in the classic tradition, which offered an alternative not only to Rawls’ progressive .. MORE
Book Review of The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World, by Samuel Gregg.1 In The Next American Economy (2022), Samuel Gregg provides a refreshing defense of free markets, emphasizing the need to frame the case for economic liberty within a broader narrative about America’s values and identity. We need this .. MORE
Pre-industrial society was characterized by low degrees of economic, political and cultural integration. By contrast, a high degree of integration in all three respects is the hallmark of modernity… Economically, modernity breeds integration by its systematic division of labour. All members of modern society specialize in a single economic activity, offering their labour, skill or .. MORE
Ludwig von Mises The works of Ludwig von Mises and James M. Buchanan reflect the best of the classical liberal intellectual tradition. Given the centenary of the publication of Mises’ Socialism,1 and since 2023 marked the tenth anniversary of the passing of Buchanan, it seems an excellent time to remember their contributions. Both defend methodological .. MORE
In countries with governments as functional and more expensive than America you would be suprised of how difficult is that the goverment vacate your house if it has been occupied by a third party. Never,..
Jose Pablo, January 14